I couldn’t find a clip of my next 2024 movie music moment, but I think it’s worth acknowledging anyway.
Jamie Lee Curtis has taken a lot of crap over the last couple of years, at least in online circles, for openly campaigning for awards. Her efforts earned her a goodwill Oscar win for a decent performance in Everything Everywhere All at Once, and they might land her a nomination in the same category tomorrow morning for her work in The Last Showgirl.
My next musical moment in a 2004 movie comes from A Different Man, a darkly comic film about Edward (Sebastian Stan), a man with a serious facial deformity who receives a revolutionary treatment that makes him look… like Sebastian Stan.
He assumes a new identity and does his best to enjoy the life he denied his former self, but can’t shake his deep insecurity. The problem is compounded when he meets Oswald (Adam Pearson), a man with an even more severe facial deformity, but a confidence and swagger Edward could never begin to achieve.
Today begins my traditional six-week focus on the previous year’s best movies. In a couple of weeks, I’ll name my personal picks for the top Oscar categories and count down my favorite movies of the year.
But first, I’ll spend two weeks honoring some of my favorite musical moments in the films of 2024. I stayed away from actual musicals, though four of my selections (including today’s) come from movies about musicians.
The week of January 19, 1985, saw Madonna atop the Billboard Hot 100 with ‘Like a Virgin.’
At #2 that week was the one hit single by General Hospital‘s Jack Wagner, ‘All I Need.’ Wagner’s tune, the title track from his debut album, stayed at #2 for two weeks, kept from the top spot by Madonna.
Throwing back to the week of January 18, 1975, gives us the very first appearance of Barry Manilow on the blog. His ‘Mandy’ topped the Hot 100 that week, becoming the first #1 of his career.
Manilow would top the chart two more times over the ensuing two years, and he added another eight top 10 hits, the last one coming in 1980. He belonged to the 70s.
Meet Me In Montauk 